Never Stop The Vortex @neverstopthevortex - Tumblr Blog

dying star by Fedorrrz on DeviantArt

Here’s another view of the Sun of 13th August. On it, you can spot several dark lines - filaments, which are large regions of very cool gas usually above the chromosphere (second of the three main layers in the Sun’s atmosphere). But if they appear on the “edge” of the Sun, they look like flames as they’re brighter than the dark outer space behind them. In that case we call them prominences and you can see many of them as well. The third thing to notice are those bright spots called plages after the French word for “beach”. You can see the equipment (belonging to this astronomer) I took this image with over at Sci-Universe’s instagram account!

#sun #stars #universe #solar system #astronomy

sci-universe

The Frozen Canyons of Pluto’s North Pole

If someone showed me this image telling to guess what’s on it, I would have no idea. Well, the recently published scene captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft turns out to show an enhanced color image of Pluto’s north polar area!

Long canyons run vertically across the polar area—part of the informally named Lowell Regio, named for Percival Lowell, who initiated the search that led to Pluto’s discovery. The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material. These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics.

The color and composition of this region – shown in enhanced color – also are unusual. High elevations show up in a distinctive yellow, not seen elsewhere on Pluto. The yellowish terrain fades to a uniform bluish gray at lower elevations and latitudes. New Horizons’ infrared measurements show methane ice is abundant across Lowell Regio, and there is relatively little nitrogen ice. read more here

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

#pluto #solar system #nasa #new horizons #astronomy #pluto's north pole #universe

sci-universe

Hubble Sees a Galaxy With a Glowing Heart

The galaxy known as NGC 1433 is a type of very active galaxy known as a Seyfert galaxy — a classification that accounts for only 10% of all galaxies. They have very bright, luminous centers that are comparable in brightness to that of our entire galaxy.

NGC 1433 is being studied as part of a survey of 50 nearby galaxies known as the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS). Ultraviolet radiation is observed from galaxies, mainly tracing the most recently formed stars. In Seyfert galaxies, ultraviolet light is also thought to emanate from the accretion discs around their central black holes. Studying these galaxies in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum is incredibly useful to study how the gas is behaving near the black hole.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

#NGC 1433 #galaxies #stars #universe #cosmos #hubble #astronomy